Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1993 09:51:10 -700
From: Keith Russell
Subject: Re: Query: "run over"
On Wed, 24 Nov 1993, Mike Agnes wrote:
> Query:
>
> She ran him over.
> She ran over him.
> She ran the idiot over.
> She ran over the dog.
>
> Can any speaker of British English confirm that
> only the second sentence above is impermissible
> in that national variety, and that the others are
> grammatical?
>
> Do any speakers of _American_ English sense
> differences among the sentences? (Some
> informants have detected different registers;
> others, the presence or lack of intent. Some
> find sentence three marginal.)
>
I am not a speaker of British English. However, as a native speaker of
Canadian English, and a speaker of "American" English as a second
language, I find all four sentences grammatical. I do feel a difference
between one and three on the one hand, and two and four on the other, but
am having difficulty identifying just what the distinction is. It does
seem to me that two and four are somewhat more standard and less colloquial.
Keith Russell